This is an odd genre of book – what I suppose might be called a ‘commonplace book’, a series of 120 short reflections pulling together ideas from many sources connected around a common theme. The theme is dealing with becoming older and these reflections are generally comforting and calm. They are intended to be read once a week over two years.
I’m older, just turned 68, and the pangs of physical decline, although currently minor are becoming apparent. I’m also at the stage in my life where my children are grown and off doing their lives, my career, such as it was, is over and I’m summing up my life, searching for the lasting meaning in all that I have done, all I’ve loved or hurt, successes and failures.
So, I asked to review Spiritual Aging in hopes of some advice or insight, some depth in this final struggle, this stage of my life. I am not inclined to simply accept where life has brought me, accept that I am closer to my end than my beginning, but Orsborn is, and she wants to soothe while I still “rage against the dying of the light.” This is a Sunday School approach, fundamentally.
Orsborn has some valuable things to say about human beings having intrinsic value, aside from our productiveness in the marketplace, about acceptance and love of oneself. I suppose, ultimately, I am not the target market – there is nothing here that is objectionable but there is also nothing here that is challenging or difficult, and I am still struggling with mortality and meaning and I need an edge Orsborn does not have.
~review by Samuel Wagar
Author: Carol Orsborn, PhD
Park Street Press, 2024
pp. 384, $19.99 US, $25 Can
